Reviews

VAF: Jessie Montgomery An Evening of Duos
May 16, 2024, Robin Hixon Theater
Review by John Campbell

On this the 27th season of the Virginia Arts Festival, Maurice Jones,  Vice President of News at WHRO Public Media, introduced Jessie Montgomery who won Best Contemporary Classical Composer Grammy 2024. She has also begun a two-year residency as VAF Composer in Residence. This follows her appearance in June, 2023 at the Attucks with Julia Bullock in Ms. Montgomery's Five Freedom Songs. See review here: http://www.artsongupdate.org/Reviews/VirginiaArtsFestival/VirginiaArtsFestival14.htm That wonderful experience had us excited to have her return hosting a chamber music evening that included three of her pieces and one each by fellow composers Andrea Cassarubios (b.1988) and James Lee III (b.1975).

In September 2019 the New York Times wrote of Ms. Montgomery as "The Embodiment of a Changing Canon." She is an artist of color who composes music that is open, improvisatory and personal. This different vibe is un-selfconscious and not bound by European forms and not bound by conventions like so many earlier composers of color have been.

The opening selection by Montgomery, Peace for Clarinet and Piano (2020), featured ten-year Virginia Symphony player Michael Byerly, clarinet and Dr Zachary Deak, piano (Assistant Professor of Music at ODU). The music, written a month after "The Great Sadness" of the Covid 19 quarantine was a personal reaction, struggling "to find what brings me joy" and finding equilibrium within her own human experience. The clarinet's high notes decorated an otherwise long, mellow line. There was sadness present in the calm of Peace.

The second Montgomery selection, Musings for Two Violins (2023), written in Chicago, was designed as a series of short movements inspired by Duos for Two Violins by Béla Bartok. His work had 44 duos while hers has seven. Each movement was like a passing whim, and each had a distinct character. The violinist was Brendon Elliot, a now grown-up local child prodigy, whose solo debut was at age ten. Of his playing the New York Times says "Silvery tone, superb phrasing and commanding technique." He was paired with Jonathan Richards, hailed by the Washington Post as bringing real drama to his performances in symphonic and chamber music, live and on recordings. Richards is the VSO Assistant Principal Second Violin and a founding member of the Adelphi Quartet. Their playing was flawlessly coordinated. The second movement, Initiation Song, drew on African tribal rituals of a girl becoming a woman. Thus, Montgomery honored her own mother who died last year. The third movement, Hymn, gave us sadness in rich, full sound that had a Bartok influence. The fourth movement, Courrante, had plucked strings reminiscent of a banjo at a barn dance. As the composer told us, each movement was like a passing whim but distinct in character.

Stunning music followed. Speechless for Cello and Percussion (vibraphone, cymbal and marimba) (2015) by Andrea Cassarubios (b.1988) played by cellist Michael Kannen, a world-traveled musician who is Director of Chamber Music at Peabody Conservatory and percussionist William McVay, a VSO player and an avid new music performer. Ms. Cassarubios says that the music was born out of questioning what it means to have a voice. It is a playful yet desperate search. The inner dialogue of bowed vibraphone and cello at first created beautiful harmonies giving way to intensity as the percussionist moved from one instrument to another: bowed cymbals, angry mallet strikes, four mallets, two in each hand on marimba, and sensual tones of flat hand strikes on cello neck. The exploration never repeated and we were constantly in a new world of sound, both fresh and demanding.

Next came Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano by James Lee III (b.1975). Alexander Beyer, Navy pilot and prize-winning pianist, joined Mr. Elliot for the four movements. The first expresses a great range of emotions. The composer explained that the second movement came about this way: "I had been giving piano lessons to two sisters and before the lesson ended I inevitably heard the question, 'Can I go now?'" He created a three-note motif in the violin that answered "No" in the piano with short, dry, articulated chords. The music becomes playful, a chase, racing in hot pursuit, plucked strings, jazzy piano. Movement three showcases how brilliantly the performers can play. First, a relaxed melody, then notes pile up with big, boisterous piano and violin squawks. The fourth is a rowdy tune, inventive and difficult. The intensity of repeats do not resolve until the very end. A delightful experience!

In the closing piece by Ms. Montgomery we heard Duo for Violin and Cello (2015). Cellist Kannen returned with violinist Emily Ondracek-Peterson, Executive Director of the ODU's Diehn School of Music (she is also on the faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University). The piece was written for a cellist friend of Ms. Montgomery and is, as she says, an "ode to friendship." Movement I. Meandering (antics) offers both bowed and plucked strings, sometimes inharmonious. It was funny, even silly at times, provoking laughs from the audience. II. Dirge (in confidence) was an attempt at coordination of instrumental sounds that fail, but with little intensity—gossip, perhaps. Letting go, loosening up the sound fades, stays soft, then disappears. In III. Presto (serious fun), duo sound is stuck in place, now fast with a loose feeling all okay but still stuck on repeats, twirling then over.

What an amazing evening of chamber music. All very inventive and superbly well played. It is reassuring that there is still plenty of room for innovative chamber music.

Virginia Arts Festival: Black Lives in the Operas of Anthony Davis
Attucks Theatre, June 2, 2024
Review by John Campbell

"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday's performance was a fine example, brought to life by soprano Christine Jobson, bass-baritone Carl DuPont, pianist Alan Johnson and composer and pianist Anthony Davis. For this writer, observer and participant in the history of the last 80 years in America, it was a summing up of sorts.

Mr. Davis' opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X was presented at the Metropolitan Opera November 18, 2023 with Governor's School graduate Will Liverman in the title role. Mr. Liverman grew up in Virginia Beach. The first radio broadcast was February 3, 2024 and followed the November premiere seen Live in HD at local cinemas. The opera was originally introduced 37 years ago at New York City Opera to a sold-out audience in 1986. Remember that bending arc of history. Dr. Davis has earned a broader audience and Virginia Arts Festival gave us the chance to meet Mr. Davis and hear music from several of of his operas. In order of performance they were: The Central Park Five, Tania, Amistad, and X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.

Each opera explores an aspect of the American story of how African Americans have been treated over history and in my lifetime. In her 1997 book The Music of Black Americans, Eileen Southern describes Davis' musical language as "a synthesis of several styles that contrast in various ways: jazz juxtaposed with classical, notated music with improvisation, non-Western with swing, and [finally]European avant-garde with free jazz."

The evening began with Harlem, A Black and Tan Fantasy from The Central Park Five sung with clear diction by Mr. DuPont with Mr. Johnson at the piano. The jazzy rhythms captured a sense of the anger in the streets of Harlem and the question mark ending of the song was reflected in the singer's face. Texts were in the program and lights were left on so we could follow along. The story is that of a tragic miscarriage of justice: a white, female jogger was raped and five young black men were convicted and spent years in prison for a crime they did not commit. One of those men is now on the New York City Council!

At the time of the incident Trump, who is a character in the opera, took a full page ad in the New York Times lobbying to bring back the death penalty. In an interview on July 19, 2019, Davis said: "The Central Park case was really the beginning of Trump's political career, which, I feel has been characterized by the exploitation of racial tensions and fears." The opera received the Pulitzer Prize in May, 2020. In the original production Trump is played as an attention-hogging buffoon. In the most recent productions this character is portrayed as deadly serious.

Moving to the next opera, Alan Johnson played the overture to Tania. To quote the composer: "My opera Tania, about the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, also explores a political topic with heiress turned revolutionary." The story is a dark comedy that takes place in a "closet world" where the young white woman is brainwashed, becomes a revolutionary, and after her black captors are killed becomes Patty again." Dr. Johnson played Overture and Mr. DuPont sang After the Fire/And the Funk Goes This Way where the pain is expressed in the agitated piano music. With many repeats a stride piano parodies the seriousness of the actual events. The text from the song Small White Bird has Mr. DuPont gesturing following a fallen feather with his outstretched arm and then both arms wide in the concluding line: "Burn with me and die to rise again and fly."

The subtlety of the librettos are difficult to summarize. In Amistad we finally got to hear soprano Dr. Christine Jobson in a deeply moving song that tells the story of a mother snatched from her homeland by slave traders. She cares deeply for her baby and is grieved when disrespected in a song titled I Could Tell By Their Looks, Their Touches. There was determination and a ferocious will to "get back where I still live my life." Deep pathos was expressed in the last verse that describes a pallet on the ground "my baby wrapped in seashells, waiting for his milk." It gets worse in The Past is a Fading Daylight. Strident piano chords set a scene of despair as she is caught in a net and chained wrist and ankles and the voice spins out a dirge of death.

The story shifts in mood when the captives have their day in a New England court and are freed, never becoming slaves. The song They Come as if from the Heavens has a mystical aspect, telling of the Goddess of the Waters and concludes "the howling is not of the seas, it is a madness not of nature, nor of the Gods, but of man." Human venality remains!

The two remaining songs were from X. Malcolm's mother sings Earl Should Have Been Home by Sunset, capturing the terror of hooded horsemen riding down their lives. In the last selection titled You Want the Truth but You Don't Want to Know, Malcolm Little is transformed into "X" who realizes his metamorphosis reflects the African Americans journey in American politics and identity. This is echoed in the rhythmic structure of the opera from Jazz to Swing and Jump Blues to modal variations of John Coltrane and Miles Davis

This was followed by Anthony Davis as virtuoso jazz pianist at the keyboard in his Wayang Variations, later incorporated into his science fiction opera Under the Double Moon. It is a mesmerizing piece with minimalist repeats that slowly create a sense of movement with tremolos, then quick note strikes that flowed, then mellowing, only to end dramatically with dense, quickly played chords.